A Healthy Life Starts with a Healthy Diet

You’ve probably heard all this in countless talking points before: the most important thing in your daily diet is to avoid alcohol, red meat and fat and to keep your portion sizes under control. While that is very good advice in general you need more than those guidelines to keep a healthy diet. A healthy lifestyle, like the ones most of us strive for starts from having a balanced diet, both in the number of calories we eat and in what we get those calories from.

The Perfect Diet

While there are more people nowadays who choose to give up meat entirely and quite a few who favour eating anything you want within certain calorie limits the truth is that you need a good balance of both to keep a healthy diet. The perfect diet has several days without meat and overall portion control. But you shouldn’t give up on meat entirely unless you have health or moral concerns about it. Meat, particularly the red meat that a lot of people argue against is actually quite good for you in moderate portions. Eating a small lean strip steak, like one of the all-natural steaks from http://www.milehighsteaks.com/ once a week is perfect for restocking your vitamin b12, iron and magnesium levels. Of course it is important not to overdo it and to maintain a healthy diet in general. Unlike meat, fried foods are never good for you and you’re better off getting your fats from avocados, nuts or olive oil than from fries.

Getting or Staying in Shape

Of course you can’t live a healthy lifestyle without at least a little bit of exercise everyday. Just 30 minutes of light to moderate exercise has been proven to cut your risk of heart disease by 50%. More exercise, like working out three times a week increases your potential lifespan by up to 20 years, depending on the shape you’re in. Of course all this exercise has to be fuelled somehow and the absolute best food for long time weight control are high protein foods like legumes, lean meats, beef in particular and some vegetables. Carbs, especially healthy carbs from fruit are the perfect pick-me-up snack after a workout as they boost your blood sugar moderately and sustainably.

Balancing the Physical and Mental

Generally speaking, a healthy lifestyle is a major if not the primary factor in having a normal life. Depression and other conditions are often described as ‘chemical imbalances’ in the brain by doctors. Well, with a healthy diet that offers you all the necessary nutrients and a training regimen the chances of you developing a mental condition or even feeling under the weather decrease dramatically. There is a distinct medical correlation between unhealthy eating patterns and poor mental health. This doesn’t mean that going on a diet will cure you of depression but it can’t hurt your heath, can it?

So remember that the most important thing for a healthy lifestyle is a balanced diet that includes all the major food groups and all the necessary nutrients you need. And remember that what you eat affects more than how you look. It can change everything from life expectancy to your outlook on life.